SHE has only just made her first movie in a supporting role. Now Sarah O’Hare has been cast as the lead in a Hollywood romantic comedy likely to be filmed in her home town of Sydney.

The model-turned-actor revealed the news at yesterday’s red carpet premiere in Sydney of her debut film, US comedy Head Over Heels, in which she plays a ditsy Australian model.

Having enjoyed the experience of making Head Over Heels — which stars Freddie Prinze Jr and Monica Potter — she has set her sights on following the career path of that former model turned Hollywood star, Cameron Diaz.

“I’m up for anything that challenges me. The best thing in life is when you have a goal and you’re there achieving it. My thing is to try and live life, like I don’t have any fear, and just go for it.”

O’Hare said her husband Lachlan Murdoch, the chairman of News Limited (publisher of The Australian), was unable to accompany her because “something came up with work”.

She is now based in the US, where she is represented by powerful Hollywood agent Mike Ovitz. O’Hare is still a Revlon spokeswoman and is doing some work with Bonds in Australia, but that is the extent of her fashion work.

When she met Ovitz — after she had signed on to Head Over Heels – – he told her she should sign with his agency, quit modelling and concentrate on making movies. “That was all the nudge I needed,” she said.

“I’d been modelling for a while and I was at the peak of my career and I thought that this is a great time to stop and try something new.”

When offered her first movie, she was initially nervous. Apart from a guest role in TV sitcom Friends, she had never acted, and worried “what if I’m terrible?” before deciding that “you can’t do things because of what other people think”.

She need not have worried. Trade journals Hollywood Reporter and Variety gave her debut movie performance “great reviews — I was so shocked”.

She looked every bit the movie star as she swanned down the red carpet at the Sydney Hoyts Cinema Complex earlier in the evening.

Wearing a beaded pink Collette Dinnigan creation, she posed for photographers, signed autographs and stopped several times to talk to friends in the crowd.

O’Hare also revealed she had another new role, as the patron of the National Breast Cancer Foundation. Proceeds from the premiere are going towards cancer charity Fashion Targets Breast Cancer.

Head Over Heels is to be released nationally on Thursday.